Name It
by dwarrowlass
Summary: Gwaine is cute and I felt like writing something silly and brief. I mean, it's just - he's cute, right?


This is actually the LEAST SILLY thing I've been working on, and it's still pretty silly. But: Gwaine is so very nice to look at, and people generally fall in love in Camelot in less time than a Bob's Burgers, so here 'tis.

…

"Come, it isn't difficult! They're girls, not goblins." Sir Gwaine clapped Liam on the back. "Why, I've asked out six girls before breakfast, and another two after coffee."

Sir Liam shrugged off Gwaine's hand. Though he was comfortable with the knights, he was shy with strangers, and especially women; he grew up with strict rules of conduct that made it difficult for him to approach one in a casual setting. Unlike Gwaine, who had knocked about all over the world with all sorts of people – and who, sensing his friend's discomfort and in a teasing mood, plucked a serving maid at random. "You, miss, would you allow this knight to escort you to a fine banquet, dancing to follow?"

The maid smiled and blushed at her tray of drinks.

"Gwaine," Liam complained.

"And you! Would you care to spend the night with my friend?"

"Oh, sir!" A girl curveted away from his outstretched hands, and left the tavern, giggling with her head tucked close to her friend's. Sir Gwaine watched them go. From the table the knights shared, which was placed outside the inn on a fine summer's evening, his view commanded the whole street. He opened his mouth to call at another.

"Gwaine!" Sir Liam barked. He colored a little. "That's enough. Spare these poor girls. I will ask the Lady Anwyn."

"I knew you had it in you!" Sir Gwaine lifted his mug in a toast. "The lucky lady will be delighted. But," he mused, draining the ale, "I still need a companion."

He rose to his feet over Liam's laughing protests and draped himself over the back of a bench. Seated neatly on a chair across the table, a girl sat, her eyes mostly on her book. However, Gwaine had seen a gleam from under her lowered lashes. He gave her a wide, charming grin.

"Hello," he said huskily. "Would you grant this humble applicant an evening of your time?"

The girl looked up. "No thank you," she said politely.

Liam snorted with laughter. Sir Gwaine cocked an eyebrow. "No? But I am a good and honorable knight!"

"Because you are good and honorable, I say thank you," the girl replied tartly. "Because you are a knight – I say no." She closed the book with a crisp thwap.

"She got you there!" Liam hooted.

"You wound me!" Sir Gwaine said, mock-hurt. He sunk to the bench as though low in despair. The girl couldn't prevent a smile from dimpling her cheeks. "Why do you disfavor knights?"

Her face went blank. "Do you really not remember?" she asked carefully.

Sir Gwaine's acting dropped away. There was a moment of shocked silence. "Oh no – do you mean –"

"Yes." She clasped her hands to her chest. "I couldn't believe that such a gallant knight had chosen me – me, over all the girls there! We talked all night! I told you my dreams – how one day I would leave Camelot. You promised me we would go together, travel the world. But in the morning you were gone." A misty smile began to grow upon her face. "But…you've returned! You've come back for me! Oh, give me but an hour! I'll be ready to leave and then we can be together – always!"

"My dear lady, I'm so sorry, I…" Gwaine paused, suspicious. "Wait. You're having me on."

The misty smile became a large, cool one. "Yes."

"It wasn't true!"

"No, it wasn't!" She gave him a sharp and victorious glance. "But you believed it could have been, and _that's_ why I don't date knights." The girl dropped her book in her satchel and rose to leave.

"I will not forget you now," Sir Gwaine said softly.

She began to walk away and called over her shoulder, "You couldn't possibly – you don't know me!"

Gwaine rose as well. "I will learn you!" he proclaimed.

"You do not know my name!"

"Your name is Moonlight!" The girl bent over in pleased laughter but kept walking. "Your name is Snow! I will find you again!"

She favored him once more, quickly, with the glimmer of a smile. "I'll be waiting," she said, and turned the corner.

Sir Gwaine sat down heavily and knocked back Liam's beer.

"What was _that?" _Sir Liam asked, his eyes merry.

Gwaine grinned, his eyes fixed on some distant inward point. "That was her," he said. "That was the woman for me."

…

Meredith flung herself on the old, rubbishy, ink-stained divan in the scrivener's workshop, which if ever removed would cause immediate revolt. "Oh, Cerys!" she sighed. "You'll never guess what just happened to me in the square."

Cerys put down her quill. "I'd guess that you're going to tell me."

"You're right!" Meredith sat up again, hair rumpled. "A knight _flirted _with me! I mean, I know it didn't mean anything, but –"

"Which one?"

"Sir Gwaine!"

"Is he the redhead with big arms?"

"No, he's the _perfect _one who's _gorgeous!" _Meredith hugged her knees. "And I flirted back! And I was good, I think, you know? Funny! And confident, maybe! I was _so _nervous but I don't think I looked too silly."

"Your mother would be proud." Cerys tried to return to writing, but Meredith plowed ahead.

"He asked me – as a joke, of course – if I wanted to go to a feast, and I was so flustered, I just said no, and he said why not and I said it's because he's a knight and I pretended we had met before and he had forgotten –" Her head popped up. "Though actually we have met once before. I'm not surprised he forgot. It was just for a moment at a council meeting. And anyway, _now _he said he wouldn't forget me, and he said my name was Moonlight!"

She looked expectantly at Cerys and Cerys gave her a very dry look in return. "You know what knights are like," she cautioned.

"I know," Meredith huffed. "But it was fun. Things like that never happen to me. But I know he won't really remember." She sighed again. "I'll probably never see him again."

Meanwhile, across the castle, Merlin stood and endured a verbal waterfall from Gwaine.

"And she was funny and smart! And modest, but not _too _modest, if you know what I mean. I think she's the girl for me, Merlin. You have to help me find her. I don't think she's a servant, but she was walking towards the castle. And her smile!" And he launched into a recital of her physical attributes which ended in Merlin thoughtfully wrinkling his nose.

"I'm not sure," he said slowly. "But you _might_ mean Meredith."

…

"Oh please, oh please?" Meredith asked. Without waiting for an answer she wound a cloak around her friend and tucked a basket over her arm.

Cerys frowned. "I don't know why you have to pick damsons today." Cerys was tall, slender and dark with a magnificent bosom, and it was the one major regret of the male scriveners' lives that she was courting with a pastry chef and would not have been interested in them anyway. "Harald would give us some from the kitchens." Harald was the pastry chef.

"But the sweetest plums grow right by the forest," Meredith wheedled. "I'll make you jam!"

"Harald would give me jam," Cerys grumbled, but she allowed herself to be led from the room they shared into the courtyard. It was a fine day and the girls walked briskly out of the castle and through the lower town. They crossed a wide plain dotted with trees before reaching the fringes of the forest, and Cerys protested loudly at each fruit-covered branch.

"The ones near the forest are better!" Meredith insisted. But when they reached the woods she didn't seem very interested in the fruit. She picked and ate a few, but her gaze kept drifting to the castle. Cerys, meanwhile, filled her basket.

"Let's go, Meredith," she said impatiently. "I've got all the ripe ones from this tree."

"A little longer," Meredith said.

Soon after the sound of hooves beating the plain could be heard approaching from the direction of the castle. Meredith perked up. She cast aside her cloak and began selecting damsons with a spurious intensity. Cerys gaped at her in sudden understanding.

Two knights galloped by, en route to the Western Forest Gate. They were laughing and shouting insults to each other, and they made a fine spectacle on the sunny day. Neither of them noticed the girls. They passed onwards, into the forest.

Meredith had been watching their progress eagerly. As they vanished among the trees, she crumpled, and catching Cerys's cold eye, clapped her hands over her face. "You little wretch!" Cerys accused. "Oh, I was a blind fool! You wanted to see _him._"

"Yes," Meredith squeaked. "But he wasn't there."

"And would it have been worth it, if he was?"

"Yes!" She laughed guiltily, and admitted, slightly muffled by her fingers, "He's beautiful. He's like a _stallion._"

"You cabbagehead!" Cerys laughed and pitched a damson pit at her.

Meredith screeched and dodged. "Careful, my nice dress!"

"'Oh Cerys, it's my only clean dress!' You wore it for _him! _My best friend is a liar!"

"My best friend is a cold fish!"

"My best friend is a loon!"

Meredith threw a pinecone at Cerys, and soon the girls were shrieking with laughter and pelting each other with missiles found in the woods.

…

In the courtyard of the castle, Gwaine grabbed Merlin's arm. "You said this was her day off!"

"It is!" Merlin protested.

"You said the scriveners hang out here!"

"They do!" Merlin gestured towards a fountain, on the rim of which was seated several inky youths blinking in the unaccustomed sunshine.

"I switched patrols for this!"

"'Oh please, Gwaine,'" Merlin whined in a falsetto. "'Pretty please switch patrols with Sir Bruin so I can spend all day with you staring like a lovesick donkey instead of getting my work done, so Arthur will yell at me and I get to spend my whole evening polishing armor! No, I insist!'"

Gwaine laughed suddenly and gave Merlin a friendly punch which knocked him a little sideways. "You're a true friend, Merlin."

"Yeah, well." Merlin smiled reluctantly. "That one – Blanchefleur – said Meredith usually spends her day off running errands at the market or reading in the square. Maybe we should check the market. And maybe," he added hopefully. "We should eat some lunch?"

Gwaine hoisted him to his feet. "Come, friend!" he boomed. "I'll buy you the finest meat on a stick Camelot has to offer."

"Oh Gwaine," Merlin said mischievously. "Her heart doesn't have a chance."

…

Finally, laughing and tired, Meredith and Cerys gathered their baskets and cloaks and headed back towards the castle. Cerys made a crown of leaves and twigs and placed it on Meredith's head, where it went nicely with her tumbled hair and the leaves that were already stuck within.

They chatted lightly and ate the plums from Cerys's basket until their hands and mouths were purple. They were pleasantly immersed in an argument about ink when Cerys remembered that she needed to buy new hose.

"Fine," Meredith said. "We'll stop by the market. I _still _think walnut makes a finer black than lamp."

"You're wrong and you're silly. But hurry," Cerys said, tugging Meredith along. "I'm meeting Harald for tea."

"The stall is this way," Meredith said, shaking her arm free and darting past a cart. "Last one there is a mouldy rogue –"

She turned the corner and came face to face with Gwaine.

He took in her wild hair, stained lips, and her happy flush. Her smile remained glinting on her face though her eyes were wide and shocked. Gwaine tumbled histrionically to his knees in front of her. "Goddess!" he cried.

"Good heavens!" her friend exploded.

Meredith snorted through her nose and bent over, hands on knees. "Your _face!_" she sputtered, really to both of them. "Oh, get up!" Gwaine's arms were outflung so she placed a fingertip under his chin and raised him to his feet. "Oh, hello, Merlin."

"Hi there," Merlin said cheerfully.

"Please, strange maiden, pardon me," Sir Gwaine announced, ostensibly to Cerys but with enough of his charm still focused on Meredith that she was fixed like a bug by a pin. "I am intoxicated by the presence of this creature. She has stricken me to the quick."

"They ought to make _you _a knight, Mer," Cerys murmured. "You'd have them over like ninepins."

"Oh, Cerys!"

"And what's your name, sir knight?" Cerys asked, looking like she was prepared to be unimpressed.  
>"Again, forgive me." He bowed deeply over Meredith's hand, which had somehow ended up in his. "I am called Sir Gwaine."<p>

"The long-winded," Merlin muttered. He and Cerys gave each other secret approving looks.

"Then I will cut to the chase!" He turned his eyes towards Meredith's, a sincere light shining within. "Would you do me the honor of joining me for the feast?"

"Yes," Meredith said, a little too quickly.

"What? Marvelous!" Gwaine's eyes lit up.

"Wait, really?"

"Of course!"

"I thought, you'd, you know…lose interest if I stopped saying no!"

Gwaine gathered both of her hands in his and gave her a wide, bright smile. "I am deeply interested!"

Meredith gave him a funny smile with the corners of her mouth tucked in. "But I don't think I can actually go." She attempted to withdraw her hands, but Gwaine held them closer.

"Why not?"

"I'm not a lady!"

Gwaine laughed and swung her around. "No matter! Arthur has set a new fashion. It would be démodé to bring a woman of noble birth. Half the ladies of the court are sick with envy, and the other half are joyfully romping around with their stable boys."

"Sir Gwaine!"

"Yes, Pearl? Yes, Birch Tree? Yes, Moonlight?"

Meredith fetched up by his side, laughing and flushed. "Where can _I _find one of these stableboys?"

"You don't need one! You're going with _me."_

"On one condition." She dimpled at him. "Tell me my name."

Sir Gwaine grinned wildly. He leaned over and whispered in her ear, "Meredith."

…

Cerys sighed and turned to Merlin. "Is he serious?" she asked.

"As serious as a sword blow," Merlin said.

Cerys sighed and shrugged her shoulders in a gesture that was part resignation and part happiness for her friend. "I guess I'm going to need a new roommate."

Meanwhile, Meredith, bewildered by the nearness of Sir Gwaine's beaming, handsome face and broad frame, and even more by the waves of affection pouring from him, said, "Oh, _very well. _I guess I'll date _one _knight."


End file.
